Ike’s Place owner scouts Berkeley for possible new sandwich location

Sandwich maker extraordinaire Ike Shehadeh was in Berkeley the other day, scouting out a location near the campus with a view to potentially opening a sandwich shop here with some business partners.

Shehadeh currently runs three sandwich spots: Ike’s Place in San Francisco, an outlet at the School of Engineering on the Stanford campus, and another shop on the Redwood Shores.

Ike Shehadeh, owner of Ike’s Place, a notoriously popular sandwich shop in San Francisco, is looking at Berkeley. Photo: Scott James.

Shehadeh said he would like to be in Berkeley — the building he was looking at was on Bancroft Way, near the Bears Lair Pub — but he is wary of applying to the city to open a business. “There’s a history with Berkeley in the way it treats small businesses,” he said. “Everyone speaks about it.”

Because he believes there would be many hoops to jump through in order to open a store under his own name, Shehadeh said he is looking instead at a partnership with his friends at The Original Soupman (whose founder, Al Yeganeh, was the inspiration for the famous Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” episode). Soups and sandwiches are a winning combination, Shehadeh points out, and, this way, he would simply supply the sandwich recipes and avoid the vagaries of launching a new business.